THE PASSING GLADIATORS

Yesterday at noon the Sixty-seventh Congress assembled in extra session to "clean up the odds and ends" of important legislation before the fourth of next March when it adjourns sine die. The present session with the regular one in December represents the last stand of the departing gladiators.

Washington will see Fordney, McCumber, Calder, Sutherland, Poindexter--names familiar to the majority of newspaper readers--for the last few months. Frelinghuysen "playmate of the President", France, Dupont, Mondell--will be gone. The Republicans stand a rebuked party, Lodge still there but badly shaken, Beveridge perhaps by the connotation of his name. Though speculation is already rife as to Congress in the next two years--a very small Republican majority; the balance of power in the hands of radicals Republican in name only; a "legislative moratorium"--the rebuked Sixty-seventh, and the incumbent Republicans, have still chance of accomplishing something to alter the judgement already passed upon them.

Just before the recent election, the President, addressing the majority leader in the House of Representatives, gave an informal report, an account of stewardship, of the work of Congress in the past few years. He mentioned the reduction of annual public expenditures of over three billions in two years--a result of a budget system created by Congressional enactment. The reduction in military expenditures was referred to; and the flexibility and adaptability of the tariff to changing conditions, through provision for administrative adjustment. The Bonus Bill, and certain widely-attacked schedules of the Tariff Act, are not mentioned. Times are becoming normal; our Reconstruction period is nothing like that after the Civil War, with embittered party conflict, and an impeachment of a President. On the whole, Mr. Harding thinks the work of Congress good.

The people, however, as evinced in the recent election, have thought differently of the Sixty-seventh. What their real opinion is, cannot be crystallized into clear expression. But Congress still has, until March 4, an opportunity to display talents largely lethargic in the past two years. Prompt action taken on the important bills pending, especially the Dyer anti-lynching bill already passed by the House will regain for them some of their lost prestige. The dying gladiators have a last opportunity to salute His Majesty--the Average Citizen--with something else than mere appropriations and mental inertia.